Data Sovereignty

Data sovereignty is the global acknowledgement that data collected by companies is governed by the laws of the nation that it is collected in. For example, data collected in Australia, even if the company collected it is headquartered in the USA, is subject to Australian data laws. The data of Australian customers that was collected by this US company in Australia, is only permitted to physically leave Australia or be accessed in the USA if this is disclosed clearly in their privacy statement.

The idea of data sovereignty is especially relevant for data security and cloud computing.